End-to-end testing
Also called E2E testing, browser automation testing
End-to-end testing runs a scripted path through a whole application, from the interface to the database and back, to check that the parts work together the way a user would meet them.
A tool such as Playwright or Cypress drives a browser through steps written in code: go to the sign-up page, fill these fields, click this button, expect this text. Each step finds its element with a selector, and each check is an exact assertion.
That precision is its strength. A good suite is fast, repeatable and catches a broken API or a missing route on every commit. It is also its limit: a test checks only what it was written to check, so a change to the markup can fail it while the experience is fine, or pass it while the experience is broken.
Where Stunt Double fits
Stunt Double does not replace an end-to-end suite. Checklists sit beside it: requirements written in plain language and judged by an actor in a real browser, so a run fails when the flow stops making sense to a user, not when a selector changes.
Related terms
- UX regression testingUX regression testing checks, after every change, that the flows users depend on still work and still make sense, not only that the code still passes.
- Synthetic monitoringSynthetic monitoring runs scripted checks against a live site on a schedule, from outside, to catch outages and slow pages before real visitors meet them.
- Browser agentA browser agent is an AI model that operates a web browser: it reads the page, decides on an action such as a click or a keystroke, performs it, and repeats until the task is done.